Mayor of Simpleton

So, I had started this thing in anticipation of cracking open my copy of Penguin Classic's Early Greek Philosophy (edited by Jonathan Barnes) for the first time. It turns out that, as Mr. Barnes classifies them, the Pre-Socratics weren't really "philosophers" in the sense that we usually might characterize philosophers (probably involving complicated hierarchies of logical arguments used to devise an edifice of metaphysical, ethical, or other abstract construction of the world, or experience, or what-have-you.) Indeed, they are what, in the text and apparently throughout antiquity, were called "natural philosophers", or more accurately for us I suppose, "Guys That Looked At the World and Tried to Understand It Somehow", and this appears to be their fundamental unifying characteristic.

This characterization alone would have made the kind of thing I wanted to do here very difficult, but when combined with the sparsity of resources concerning the Pre-Socratics; the lack of any holistic texts or models; such a task becomes far more distant. Instead, this book has lent itself to my intellectual curiosity more through an academic-historical interest than a philosophical, argumentative, or critical-thinking interest.

It's definitely satisfying to get a glimpse into the beginnings both of what we (I) understand as philosophy and natural science. These guys were really trying to understand the fundamental workings of the world, specifically separately from the traditional "it must be magic," or, "the gods did it," or, "it just is, so get over it, pussy,"-styled modes of thought.

It is definitely interesting, but that's why this thing has taken a bit to get off the ground. I might bump this post a few times with some thoughts on each of these guys (they're organized by individual in the book, chronologically) as I get through this thing, but it may be some time before I get around to making fun of Plato for being so self-righteous.

Everyday I Write the Book

I can't say that I'm certain how this works, but apparently if you don't have your own blog, you don't qualify as a person... so here's the only testament to my personhood. I will mostly be posting thoughts on the philosophy I'm reading, because I need a vetting process. Otherwise, there's a significant chance anyone stumbling nearby will get the cross-stench of my D&D affliction also, though this interface isn't for that specific purpose. I'm going to post this, just to test it out.

Can you hear me now?